Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia

"At the moment, a number of tasks directed at the liberalization of penitentiary policy and the humanization of the implementation of punishment are resolved. In 2016, the lowest number of persons held in detention facilities in the contemporary history of the Russian Federation was reached."

Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service claimed that a number of steps were taken to make the penitentiary system more liberal and humane, including a reduction in prisoner numbers. However, even as the inmate population decreased to a record low, conditions in prisons remain among the poorest in Europe.

Victor Sadovnichy

Rector of Moscow State University

“For the first time in the history of Russian universities - even Soviet ones - a world rating placed us in third place by the criteria of (education) quality. That has never happened before - third in the world…among thousands of world universities…Stanford and Oxford are ahead of us and we are in third place.”

The chief of Russia’s oldest university told Russian President Vladimir Putin that his school ranked third in the world in terms of education quality. However, the third-place ranking only pertains to a narrow metric of post-graduation alumni accomplishments.

While U.S. Treasury Department officials declined comment, American virtual learning company Coursera confirmed it does have U.S. permission for online lessons on their platform to be accessible in Crimea.

This is not even close to true, and Govorukhin need look no further than other nations of the former Soviet Union for constitutions expression banning censorship. The OSCE noted in 2010 that only Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia were the only former Soviet republics not to have censorship bans.

Vladimir Putin

Russian President

"You’ve seen what’s happening: An immigrant raped a child in a certain European country. The court acquitted him based on two reasons: that he speaks the language of the receiving country poorly and did not understand that the boy -- and it was a boy -- did not consent."

But Putin's remarks to his council on interethnic relations contradict the facts of the actual case. The attacker’s conviction was only partially annulled, and he remains in custody pending a retrial in the case. Russian media reporting of the case as an acquittal, and Putin's reference to it, is an example of "pro-Kremlin disinformation," according to an EU task force.

Matviyenko is correct that the Crimean-Tatar language was accorded the status of a “state” language for the first time in Crimea after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. But many Crimean Tatars -- a majority of whom opposed Russia’s takeover of the peninsula -- say this recognition remains largely symbolic, and is outweighed by what many consider systematic repression against the minority ethnic group.

Prominent editor Vladimir Sungorkin said that Russians have a far tougher time adopting orphans than Americans had before Russia banned the process in 2012. According to the Russian and U.S. government websites, the process for Americans was difficult.

Iosif Prigozhin

husband and producer of Russian pop star Valeria

“It was a lie when they said that we signed a letter about the annexation of Crimea! There never was such a letter. There has never been anything with Valeria’s or Iosif Prigozhin’s signatures concerning the annexation of Crimea…. We were asked about the referendum in Crimea."

Valeria and Iosif Prigozhin were among more than 500 of the country’s top cultural figures to sign a controversial open letter published March 11, 2014 by Russia’s Culture Ministry expressing “firm” support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “position on Ukraine and Crimea.” Prigozhin denies it meant the two supported Russia's annexation of Crimea. Prigozhin is right that there is no mention of “annexation” in the letter, but the two have been vocal in their support of bringing Crimea into Moscow’s domain.

The Kremlin’s controversial new human rights ombudswoman has denied publicly calling for the return of a Soviet-era law criminalizing homosexual acts between men. Tatyana Moskalkova may not have pushed for resurrecting the law, but she has said Russia probably abolished it too soon in 1993.